Friday, October 31, 2008

Thanks to my husband for the great Halloween pic! Visit his siteto see more of his work.

Happy Halloween!For those of you who are going out tonight trick-or-treating or to a party, please have a safe and fun time!

On to the super exciting news!We will be holding a challenge and contest starting tomorrow, November 1st here on YAedge!

Contest, you ask?Challenge?Do tell!

Here’s the deal.We’ve decided to hold a writing challenge for the month of November for all of the people who A) want to do NaNoWrimo but don’t think they can write 1,667 words a day, B) want to have a fun writing experience that doesn't take over their lives for a month or C) want to do NaNoWrimo, but are working on stories they’ve already started.According to NaNoWrimo rules, participants cannot work on stories started before November 1st 12:00am.

So, we decided to hold our own!We’re calling it 1k-a-day. That’s right! 1,000 words a day, no more or less (well, unless you’re on a roll and would like to bump up the word count…more on that later).We'll be posting our word counts each day by 11:59pm PST and we’d like you to do the same.Just post your word count in the comments section of each day’s post.

Now, down to the super cool part…free books.That’s right…FREE BOOKS!We'll be giving away YA books from our own collections at the end of each week.

What do I do to win FREE books? Just post your starting word count in tomorrow’s blog post.It can be 0…it can be 40,000.We don't care. Whatever your word count is to start, we just need you to document it.From there, you can either post your word count daily, or by Friday evening.What is most important to us is your end word count each week.

For those of you who are unable to start November 1st, no problem! That is the beauty of 1k-a-day. We don't care about hitting an end of the month word count. It's all about your daily goal of 1,000 words!

This is where the overachievers come in.We will announce the winner who write the most words the previous week each Monday!We have a selection of books to choose from and will slowly “leak” the books up for grabs. How easy is that?Work on a book…win a book!

Make sure to check the blog each day for inspiration and read our ups and downs of the challenge. Plus, you never know when we will decide to give a book out on a whim!

So, get your thinking caps on, your writing notes out and dust off your keyboards.Oh yeah, don't forget the coffee! It’s time to get down to business and write 1K-a-day! All of us here at YAedge are in the heat of the moment with our current work-in-progress and don’t want to put them down! The excitement is brewing. Make sure you don't miss it!

Don’t forget to post your word counts everyone. Make sure to tell all your writer friends and family. The more the merrier. See you all tomorrow!

Quick note: For those of you participating in NaNoWrimo, you can also participate in 1k-a-day. Just use 0 as you starting word count and post your daily or weekly counts here.